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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Author
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Topic: Building Up and Breaking Down Film.
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Ben Goodman
Film Handler
Posts: 32
From: Danbury, CT
Registered: Apr 2008
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posted 05-04-2008 12:29 AM
To break down a regular 6 reel film, assuming you're keeping the trailers, a standard time for someone who knows what they're doing would probably be about half an hour (or a little less). For someone who's just learning how to do a breakdown and/or misses splices, it's probably about 45 minutes.
As for buildup, I speak from the corporate environment with the analog preshow. Infinite prefeature snipes (most of which don't have framelines)-- fandango, coke ads, tech ads, etc-- plus 6 trailers per print takes a while to build up. I'm not that great at it so it takes be about an hour to an hour and a half. Our most experienced booth guy, who's been building prints for 30 years, can have them completely together within 45 minutes.
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Charles Greenlee
Jedi Master Film Handler
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Posts: 801
From: Savannah, Ga, U.S.
Registered: Jun 2006
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posted 05-05-2008 05:51 AM
quote: Brad Miller If you are building "old school like a retard" style
::sigh:: That'd be the way I was taught, and good at it too (as much as one can be). When its taught to you as the preferred (by that person who was teaching), you learn how to get it down to an art. I got it to where there was minimal-no buckling after the ring was pulled out, with minimal static, and smooth splices (most others couldn't hear the splice go through). Yes, when I was initially being trained, I was pretty much shown every bad habit know to man as what we should do.(short of eating fried chicken during film handing. And that was probably only due to the fact that we didn't have any available at the time. "And you want to make sure you keep a full stomach during build ::munch munch ::") But even before I came on here, I realized that alot of what I was shown was either bass akwards, silly, or downright stupid. Reading here only further served to help purge the bad habits. None of the theatre's I worked at had goldbergs, though I wish they did. So I learned to use the 6ks. Though I was being as carful as possible with the "Retard method", it still could introduce unnecessary problems, and besides, the 6ks allow me to multitask. As mentioned before, you can be building a reel, while another is winding off to a platter.
I think the Savannah 10 has one. I remember seeing it while over there certifying for level-2. Asked the trainer about it "Isn't that one of those platter reels?", but he just shrugged his shoulders, and showed me how to build to the 6000ft reels (though I was already doing that long before that). I even explained to him what it was for, and you could build an entire movie to it, and play straight off of it. Eh, well, if they won't use it, I wouldn't mind having it.
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Frank Angel
Film God
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Posts: 5305
From: Brooklyn NY USA
Registered: Dec 1999
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posted 05-05-2008 08:34 AM
Only to shift the topic slightly, but to any of you change-over guys -- how long does it take to "make-up" a reel-to-reel print. By make-up I mean a print that comes in with heads and tails just masking taped on and three or four layers of splicing tape at each join that has to be removed, leaders spliced back on properly. This is assuming the print is otherwise in good condition -- no splices within the body that need to be replaced, no change-over cues that have to be added and no count-down sync leaders that have to be retimed or corrected.
I got just such a print this weekend and it took me about an 1-hr 30min - 1hr 45min to do all the fingernail scraping of the tape, cleaning all the glue off the joins, rewinding twice to get onto house reels and adding clear head identification information on each leader (reel number, title, reel number side ways, format information).
For other prints that were NOT in good such condition, and more reels that the typical 5 or 6, it has taken me as much as 3 maybe 3.5 hours to fully prep a badly mauled print. This leads to the question, where do you draw the line on how much time to spend before you have say, it is becomming an issue of diminshing returns economically to invest that kind of work-hours on a print that may not even bring in as much money as it is costing to repair.
We've once tried to bill back the repair time to the distributor. You could hear the laughter on the other end of the phone without even holding it to your ear.
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Scott Norwood
Film God
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Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-05-2008 09:03 AM
I generally budget an hour for makeup, whether to 2000' reels, 6000' reels, or platter. Add another half-hour to platter makeup if the makeup table is crappy (e.g. Super Platter or old-style SPECO) and requires attention while the film is spinning onto the platter from 6000' reels.
This works if the print is in "typical" condition, as Frank discusses, and of "typical" length. It can sometimes be faster to make up a print for big reels or a platter than for small reels if there are issues with the leaders or cues. Add another 15-20 minutes for a standard trailer reel (5-6 "items," in mixed head/tail orientation, from trailer cores).
The only time saving feature of a changeover booth at makeup time is the ability to start the show after the first reel is ready. Obviously, "breakdown" time is zero.
For platter breakdown, I budget thirty minutes, but, like Brad, will specify an hour if the print is to be picked up immediately after the show, so as to avoid angry couriers. I have yet to see any theatre in this area with a Goldberg platter reel.
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